It's the Feast of St. Mark today. Mark was close to St. Paul and St. Peter, and his Gospel is believed to be the earliest; he was martyred in Alexandria. The wicked Venetians stole his relics from that city in the early 9th century A.D. and adopted the Evangelist as their patron saint. Perhaps you've enjoyed the basilica built in his name.
Here's Austin Farrer, preaching in Trinity College chapel to students:
Happy is the man who learns from his own failures. He certainly won’t learn from any one else’s. Here I am on a safe ground, for you are all failures, are you not? when it comes to serving God. So there is no fear of my missing my target in any of you, and especially, perhaps, just at the end of a vacation. Vacations tend to be spiritual disappointments. It is humiliating how, when you get back into your families, childish faults of temper reassert themselves which you hoped you had outgrown; humiliating how, as soon as you lose the encouraging company of your Christian friends here, your religion languishes. You have not prayed nor worked nor controlled yourself as you hoped to do. God has given you much; you have not given anything worth mentioning to God. Well, St Mark went back from the work in Pamphylia (if he is indeed the same man), and in Gethsemane none of the disciples behaved with credit. It is by these desolating experiences that God teaches us to trust him, not ourselves. The more emptied out you are, the more hope there is of your learning to be a Christian. Now is the very moment—there will never be a better—for you to put your trust in the God who makes something from nothing, who raises the dead.
The more emptied out you are, the more hope there is of your learning to be a Christian. Now is the very moment—there will never be a better—for you to put your trust in the God who makes something from nothing, who raises the dead.
Such wisdom and truth.
Pax et Bonum,
LSP
